


She said, "It's all in your head"

by capripian



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (for michael distortion), (wrt michael shelley stuff), Canon-Typical Body Horror, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Beta Read, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Present Tense, This isn't much of anything I suppose, Usage of It/Its Pronouns, uhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:46:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23904070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capripian/pseuds/capripian
Summary: "You never tried to take revenge on Gertrude?""She knew how to protect herself."Michael neglects to mention that it tried, once. Never again.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 53





	She said, "It's all in your head"

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from Madalena's Mask by Lung. Fantastic song, has a lot of Spiral energy.
> 
> I'm not quite pretentious enough to call this a study on Michael and Gertrude's relationship, but I suppose that is what it is to some degree. The idea of a confrontation between Michael the Distortion and Gertrude was alluring, I suppose, so I wrote it. Mostly late at night.
> 
> So, uh, enjoy I guess! I've been sucked down into this hyperfixation hole, so hopefully I'll produce even more content for it than I already have. Enjoy!

She feels as though she is being watched. This is not unusual for Gertrude, of course. She is the Archivist, and though she chafes under those duties she is still a servant of the Beholding. This, however, is… different. She can easily shake the normal background hum of the Eye’s constant vigilance, and even after she feeds the sensation has grown to be no more than a slightly unsettling aftertaste. She does not allow any sort of eye into her private quarters, which makes it even more perturbing that she feels it now. She knows by now that fear cannot grip at her so easily, so she wouldn’t call herself frightened. She’s just… ah.

Confused. Of course. Not the Eye after all, but the Spiral, its antithesis. Gertrude chuckles, before abruptly stiffening up. She does not like to Watch very often, but against the Spiral it is a necessity to see through its maddening confusion, to pin it down in one place and file it neatly away. And so she Watches, trying to relax her mind and let the insights come to her. 

* * *

_“Excuse me?”. A young man entered her office, and she could not help but See the mark of the Spiral he possessed secondhand, had since his school days. Interesting. “ Are you, um, Ms. Robinson? I was told I’d be working as your- your Archival Assistant?”_

_“Yes, I am the Archivist,” She smiled, trying her best for it not to feel like a threat. “It is ever so nice to work with you, Mister Shelley.”_

_His surprise at her knowing his name was quickly overshadowed by a look of concern as she faked a cough, and Getrude smiled. He would do quite nicely._

* * *

There are two doors at the exit to her flat. The door that has been in her abode since she moved in is painted white, stark against the dark color of her walls. It is sturdy, and she knows that if she goes through it she will end up on the other side, in a pleasantly average hallway. The neighbor in number 33 is planning how she will skip work for her grandmother’s funeral. Her grandmother died of a fatal aneurysm, without notice. The tenant currently across the hall from her has stayed up all night trying to finish their dissertation. They are worried that when people see it they will be laughed at, judged. She Sees it all, and she begins to feel the gentle wash of information turn into a riptide, pulling her away. She resists. It is familiar, she reminds herself. Merely preliminary, to keep her centered in reality.

The more pressing issue, of course, is the bright yellow door that has most definitely not been in her flat before this moment. Its woodgrain seeks to draw her into its patterns, and when she unfocuses her eyes she can almost begin to make out some sort of- no. No, she doesn’t think so. She recognizes this door, knows how it entrances people to enter it. It holds great power, but it has elected to come for the Archivist herself in her own home. A foolish idea, certainly. She will make it regret that decision. Gertrude breathes in, closing her eyes and then _opening_ them, all of them. The Distortion’s paint starts to peel at its edges, curling into its ever-present spirals, when suddenly-

“I would not do that, Archivist,” says a voice, and her concentration is swiftly broken by a flash of chaos in her mind, scrambling her thoughts as though she was a television beset by static. She’s heard that voice before, but never like this. The door swings open, and suddenly she Knows. _Ah._

* * *

_Michael had been making himself quite useful. Gertrude enjoyed that, she thought. Useful things. The sort that would do what they are told, go where they were meant to, but still with some tie to the need to Know that made them acceptable assistants. As if he heard her think of him, he popped his head in._

_“S-sorry to interrupt, Ms. Robinson, but I think I found something else on that haunted pendulum case from, ah, from statement 005-”_

_“Yes, yes, Michael. We both know the case number, just bring it here.” He stood, awkward, next to her desk as she read the file._

_When she finished, he was still standing there. He seemed to be expecting… praise? Ridiculous, for an Assistant, but Gertrude's fate was already tied up by the Mother of Puppets. She was not new to a bit of manipulation._

_She patted his arm, forcing her hand to shudder. "Thank you very much, Michael dear," she said, and sent him on his way. She could masquerade as frail. She knew he would believe her, naive as he was._

* * *

Gertrude cannot believe her eyes. Well, that isn't quite true. Gertrude can believe her eyes, but she isn't sure she wants to. She had thought it quite apparent that Michael Shelley had died during the Great Twisting, gotten too close to the center of the maze and been consumed by the madness that plagued the Distortion's very nature. This is something else entirely. Not quite the Spiral itself, but also not quite Michael Shelley. She stays seated in her chair, despite the grotesque creature she sees before her. Her Sight is advanced enough that she can See him- See it- without the purported humanity it wears like an ill-fitting garment. 

The fingers are where her eyes gravitate towards first. The twisting curling spiral of each sharp and bony claw. They remind her of the spirals inherent to the Fibonacci sequence. The thought of this unreality being defined by fixed laws is a fool’s errand, but the Spiral did always love its complex mathematics. She pulls herself away, with a bit of effort, because Gertrude is no fool and she will not be taken in by the false infinities of its endlessly multiplying patterns.

So she simply looks at it. Waiting. For something, most surely. For it to take her? It would not be able to, unfortunately for it. She has plenty of defenses against such abductions. And time passes. The clock on her wall seems to go a bit soft, and she knows that time is moving slightly to the left of where it should be, but she can wait. Despite what Agnes says- what she used to say- she is patient when she needs to be. 

Finally, it speaks. Every note of its voice, distorted and blurred, feels like a shifting color in the air. “Hello, Archivist.”

Michael Shelley has never called Gertrude Archivist, but then again she can no longer assume this is Michael Shelley in the slightest. It might be simply the Spiral wearing his skin, and that is the most likely possibility, and yet. Something about the way this creature turns its head, the familiar body language mutated into something designed to spark horror, makes her think differently. 

“Michael?”, she asks, keeping the compulsion from her voice. She knows she has a lighter and some gasoline underneath her desk for emergencies, and she has the suspicion that she will be able to get to it in time, but she will proceed with goodwill until it is no longer an option. This could be useful. She could make this into something useful.

The thing laughs, and it cuts through her mind as easily as its fingers could, grating and hypnotic and echoing long after its mouth has stopped moving. Her hands shake, and she isn’t pretending this time. It looks at her hands, and its smile is far too wide and far too sharp for something that once was comforting.

* * *

_She dropped a teacup, watched it shatter on the ground disinterested. As she heard the sound of footsteps, she put on her face of confusion. Michael ran in, tsking when he saw the spilled tea and shattered ceramic on the floor. Not touching any of the statements, of course, but still an issue._

_“How did this happen?”, he asked, looking at her with a face of such earnest concern. She would feel bad about deceiving him like this, but she had too much to do and too much at stake to worry about morality._

_“Ah, my hands were just a bit unsteady, I’ll be quite alright,” she said, letting her age show a bit more than she usually would. He looked to her hands, and she could almost make out_ pity _on his face, which seemed quite ridiculous. Nevertheless, it would get the task done._

_He smiled, obliging. “Alright then, Ms. Robinson, I’ll go get the, ah, the broom? If that’s alright?”_

_“That would be fantastic,” she said. Everything was falling into place._

* * *

“I am not _Michael_ , Archivist. Part of me once called himself by that name, but not any longer. Not after the Great Twisting, It Is Not What It Is struck down by a troublesome meddler.” Its gaze is direct, and she resists the temptation to look into its eyes. She knows it will be nothing but an endlessly spiralling paradox, pulling her in, and she does not wish to risk it. Michael Shelley never looked her in the eye, but this thing is no longer Michael Shelley, and she cannot use the same rules as she did with him. She must be strong.

She straightens her back. “Hello then, Distortion. What is your business here?”, she says, dropping a light hint of compulsion into her words. She dislikes to do so, but such things are sometimes necessary. It looks pained for a moment, if such a creature can feel pained, and then returns to its previous frivolous expression. 

And that _laugh,_ it echoes in her head yet again. She is not sure if it laughed or if it merely convinced her that she heard it laugh. It echoes around so much in her head that she doubts if it could exist outside it. “Does a blade have business with those it strikes down? Or perhaps a bird, having business with a moth it will devour? Such silly questions, Archivist.”

Not clear, then, its intention. A threat, certainly, but she is not sure how much its actions are its own and how much its actions are that of Michael Shelley. “Very well. Do as you will.” She goes back to her book, a surrealist piece written by a young man touched by the Stranger. A bit derivative, but it is what she has in hand at the moment.

Time is still passing strangely, and she simply focuses on her book. The words start to blur together, but a sharp glare at What-Once-Was-Michael quashes that. And so Gertrude continues to read. She doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere in the book, which she attributes to the being standing in her living room, playing with its hands in a manner that would have been awkward if not for their unusual composition. 

* * *

_Michael was fiddling with his hands again, playing with them enough that it was starting to get on her nerves. He explained at the onset that his hands became difficult in the cold, and she Knew that he had problems with them ever since childhood, but still. Did he need to fidget so overtly?_

_Gertrude faked a shiver, directly in Michael’s view, making sure he saw it. He finally-finally!- let his hands go, and pulled his scarf off of his neck to place onto hers. “Be careful, Ms. Robinson. Wouldn’t, um, wouldn’t want you to catch a chill.”_

_She had known about the events occurring at Zemlya Sannikova for some time now, and Michael was obviously the perfect candidate. He trusted her, and even more than that he_ cared _for her. And he was useful, in the same way a pawn is useful when it lays down its life for the queen. A perfect sacrifice._

* * *

It has been an amount of time. Gertrude can hear a shifting of body, but she knows better than to look up. That same hazy voice floats back into her mind. “Is it difficult, Archivist? To be so horribly alone, the last… survivor?” It giggles, curling round her spine with a soft threat. “Have you survived the Ceaseless Watcher, Archivist? Are you _sure_ of it?”

She grits her teeth. “I am no more or less Gertrude Robinson than when I first took up this position, _Michael._ ” He laughs, and all of the blood rushes to her head. Suddenly the room is not how it was, she- How is the room upside-down?

Her eyes open. Just the two of them, but they still have _power._ She is the Archivist, but before she was that she was Gertrude Robinson, eight years old and drinking in everything she saw, fifteen years old and watching the thing that killed her cat like a hawk, twenty-one years old and reasoning her way through her first proper meeting with a monster. She has always been able to See her way through things, and she can do it now as well. The room gradually settles back down to how it has always been, and she fixes Michael with a withering stare.

It shrugs, nonchalant, and drums its fingers on the table next to her front door. Her _real_ front door. The sound has much more of an echo than it should, and she feels as though it is playing some sort of song. How odd. “You do not have to _lie,_ Archivist. I am the Throat of Deception itself, do you _really_ think I cannot recognize them? Did your mother never tell you not to fib?”

Her mum died ages ago, of course, but this is not about her, is it? “Very well then,” she says. “I am much more Gertrude Robinson than _you_ are Michael Shelley." When she sees it wince, flickering and drifting in and out of reality, she knows she made the right choice. 

And it suddenly solidifies. “I think I am going to kill you, Archivist. It would be quite the gift to the Eye, cutting out a troublesome cataract.” It is not the first time she has been threatened with death, and it will not be the last. Usually those making the threats speak with more knowledge of their situation, of course. And, she thinks, less residual emotion left over from when they were human. Gertrude pulls the can of gasoline from behind her desk. 

* * *

_Gertrude pulled a pistol from her quarters. She didn’t know if she would need it, but there was always the possibility that she would have to fight, and she would rather be prepared than dead. Michael passed by her, buttoning up his coat. She didn’t tell him that Sannikov Land would not necessitate it. Too suspicious. These final moments were crucial._

_“Are you ready, Michael? It might be very unsettling,” she said, as they stood on the deck of the boat in preparation. Michael smiled, though she could see the nerves hidden right underneath._

_“Don’t worry about me, Ms. Robinson. I’ll be fine,” he said. She certainly hoped he wouldn’t be, given that it was the whole reason he was here. The Great Twisting had to be disrupted, at any cost. Even if the cost was an Assistant. Beholding would have no issue with it. They were practically designed to be disposable. They stepped off the boat, Michael holding her arm as she fought to hide the smile of a plan going correctly._

* * *

Michael laughs, and she doesn’t think she can ever get used to it. “Do you _really_ think that fire will be what hurts me, Archivist?”. It has a point. Normal fire won’t do much to an avatar, especially one so malleable as an avatar of Es Mentiras. Gertrude smiles, thin and most definitely not kind. The Desolation’s fire can hurt a great many things.

She lights a match. She does not know if she ever had a match before it found its way into her hand, but she mentally thanks whatever remains of Agnes. The Lightless Flame cannot be permitted to burn the world, but fire is _dreadfully_ useful. Michael seems to be reconsidering its ill-thought out plan to kill her, given how it has backed up against its door. “I would suggest you go. I am not sure if your door would burn, but I am willing to test that.”

Its grasp on the carefully whimsical voice is slipping, replaced by what Gertrude can only parse as genuine emotion. “This is not over, Ms- Archivist.” A little slip, but it tells so much. As the door closes and ceases to be entirely, she has survived yet another encounter. She is good at this. Ritual thwarted after ritual thwarted, monster and avatars each dealt with in turn. Easy.

* * *

_“Take this map, Michael. It will be very difficult to make your way around when you enter, but the map will be of great assistance,” she said, standing on the threshold of the Distortion itself. Years went into this, preparing her assistant to be an easy sacrifice._

_He looked back at her, fear in his eyes. “And this will stop all of this? This will destroy it?”_

_“Yes. If you do this, all of the madness will end. Don’t worry, son. Just walk inside,” she said. Michael smiled, still hesitant, mind cracking, but he opened the door. The creak was definitely much more than it should have been, but he entered despite all the warning signs. A fool, just as she thought from the onset. She closed the door._

_As the grand edifice of madness crumbled behind her, Gertrude felt a bit of emotion. She chose to ignore it. She did the right thing. That was that._

* * *

That is that. Gertrude Robinson does not doubt, and she _absolutely_ does not regret.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this, kudos and comments are always welcome. I'm @capripian on tumblr and @Space Gay#2644 on discord if you want to talk.


End file.
